As the number of users viewing information and purchasing items electronically increases, there is also an increasing amount of forgery, misuse of identity information, and other illicit activities in various electronic environments. Forced unauthorized commands or submissions from a trusted user of a Web site, for example, is often referred to as Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF or XSRF). Typically, the submission is made to originate at the Internet protocol (IP) address of the user, such that the actual initiator of the submission is untraceable. The attacks often affect Web sites that use mechanisms such as state management, Web cookies, browser authentication, or client-side certificates to authenticate users. A CSRF exploit can, for example, be executed by tricking or otherwise causing a user to submit malicious data to a trusted Web site. The exploit typically originates at a malicious site, as a malicious payload in a file such as a hypertext markup language (HTML) or JavaScript file, which can contain script code triggering an action to be performed on a third-party site on behalf of the victim.
In some instances, a user might be using a third party Web site or playing an online game that allows the user to generate submissions to a specific Web site. For example, a user might be able to request a purchase of an item from an electronic marketplace by selecting a hyperlink or other element on a third party Web site. The hyperlink or other element that is used by a user on a third party Web site to request a purchase may be owned by the third party and not by the electronic marketplace. However, because the electronic marketplace might want to allow purchasing via a third party Web site to increase revenue, etc., it is desirable to allow processing any requests that originate from outside of the electronic marketplace. Therefore, it is desirable for the electronic marketplace to have a capability for secure processing of requests or submissions that are free of CSRF and originated by a user action on a hyperlink or other element residing on a third party Web site and owned by the third party. In order to reduce the likelihood of fraud the electronic marketplace might want to verify the user request submission before processing. Thus, there is a need to establish a trusted, secure communication channel between the electronic market place and the third party that would ensure secure propagation of a trust token randomly generated by the electronic marketplace and submitted to the third party to be included in a hyperlink or other element used by a user to submit requests to the electronic marketplace.